When our children grow up to be adults, they will face emotional dilemmas.

Let me illustrate what I mean. My husband was 24 years old when he was away at graduate school. He was invited to the wedding of his close friend Steve. There was a conflict because his parents also invited him to a reunion with a family of close friends he grew up with. He felt the tug-of-war within him. He decided to go to the reunion event, but he felt very resentful and sad the whole time he was there.

Recently we were trying to work out the time and location for the holiday celebrations with our children. Our daughter seemed to have a difficult time deciding when and where to celebrate with us because she didn’t know what to do with her boyfriend. Should she ask for an invitation for her boyfriend? If she were to spend the night at our house, what can she do with her boyfriend, knowing that we would not allow them to spend the night together at our house? If she chooses to celebrate Christmas with her parents apart from her boyfriend, she would feel she was abandoning her boyfriend. How should she deal with this guilt?

In a Family Life article, the author describes how parents must release their children to grow independently when they get married. Her daughter Sarah was about to get married and she asked her mother to be strong at the wedding because if mom lost it, they would all lose it. This shows that mom is the emotional hub of the family.

Cutting the apron strings doesn’t begin all of a sudden when you walk your child down the aisle. Even in the day-to-day connections and interactions with our children, we have to cut the apron strings to release our children to grow, no matter how much it hurts. The more we are able to cut the emotional strings that tie down our children, the more e able to spread their wings to fly on their own.

How can we help our adult children resolve their emotional dilemmas?

1. Let your child decide. Never treat family get-togethers as an obligation. Make sure your child understands that these are invitations, not obligations.

2. Offer options that minimize or eliminate the dilemma. Sometimes changing the venue and the time may eliminate the conflict or dilemma. Helping out with transportation may also help if your child doesn’t have a car or other resources to get her to the venue. Including a boyfriend or girlfriend in the celebration, to the extent that they can respect your boundaries, will also help minimize the dilemma.

3. Refrain from loading guilt on your child. If you’re going to let your child decide, you might just hear a “no” answer. Don’t ever put your children on a guilt trip if they choose to spend time with someone else and somewhere else.

4. Assure your child of other opportunities for getting together. Unless the circumstances are unusual, or unless the relationships are estranged, grown children still want to stay connected with their parents. If they cannot participate, assure them of future opportunities to get together.

5. Be a big girl (for mom) or a big boy (for dad). In the end, we parents have to prove ourselves to be big boys and big girls. Cutting the apron strings and letting go is a painful experience, but like Sarah’s mom, we must be strong.

What have been some of your experiences of this type of emotional dilemmas? How did you help your child resolve these dilemmas? What tips can you share with us?

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